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Anyone have any information on that sign, or what the Farmer's Guide Detective Service was? I have a similar sign (relief lettering there, but paint long gone) that I pulled off a barn in rural Shelby County when I was a youngster. I've never been able to find anything out about it.

As a former Crane employee (and resident of both Bedford and Bloomington during my tenure there), I'm especially struck by this photo. This is the closest to (geographical) home a Shorpy photo has hit. Passing through the gates to Crane always seemed like entering a time warp to me...a place like this wouldn't be all that unusual there even today.

My father (age 89) recalls his mother weeping during the Depression when the storeowner in town gave her only 12 cents per dozen for eggs from the farm, and not the 12½ cents that she had been hoping for.

Blankenship doesn't exist any more, near as I can tell; for you fellow Southern Indiana folks, it seems it was down around Bedford. According to this map, it looks like it may have been swallowed up by Crane.

It's the photographs of people that rank among my favorites on this site, and this one is no exception. I wish I could hand this young man a penny so I could learn what occupies his mind as he stares off into the distance. He looks to be contemplating something deep, possibly conflicting, and I find myself wanting to help him resolve it.

It's that doggone salmonella outbreak, we are practically giving the eggs away but still no takers. Maybe the afternoon train will have some shoppers getting off. Wonder what Ma is makin' for supper tonight. One of these days I'm gonna get outta this one-horse town. Guess I'll have me another Nehi grape and pick the fly dung outta the pepper shaker. Wish I had a radio.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.